Also with plans to reduce industrial "intensity" in and around residential areas. 

Although I find competition for what I call investment grade parks is quite keen.. so returns are more in the MF space.. when you venture out east from the west coast or look at low end parks returns are higher but management is quite intense.. as our dealing with some pretty scruffy tenant base.

This is yet another failure of our educational system where algebra is deemed intensely important to our future but financial knowledge is not. 

Having developed a majority of my career in CA the regulations and red tape for construction and development are intense. 

If you have the time to devote to it, direct to seller methods can be very effective, but will take ultra-patience and intensive work. 

Most of the bad noise right now is about downtown skyscrapers and REIT or Syndication apartment complexes where they played short term versus long term interest rates wrong.  

In my experience, a suit for specific enforcement of a real estate purchase contract is not particularly complex or fact intensive that would lead to extensive time needed for discovery. 

Do some smaller dollar private lendingA property is too capital intensive and $20k will not get you very far.You also did not describe what level of risk you want to take, so that is something also to take into consideration when evaluating where to invest.

If you make enough noise, and eventually do enough deals, you do make a good deal somewhere along the way. 

As a side note, my wife and I work full time and are looking at strategies that are less time intensive.